Pokémon Sword and Shield Officially Unveiled, Coming to Switch Later This Year

During today’s special Pokémon Direct from Nintendo, the next mainline Pokémon games have been unveiled: Pokémon Sword and Shield.

Forming the next generation of the Pokémon series, Sword and Shield take place in a brand new region, Galar, and feature a range of brand new Pokémon creatures to collect and fawn over. Leading the pack are the three new starter creatures: Scorbunny, Sobble, Grookey.

Grookey is a grass monkey, Scorbunny is a fire rabbit, and Sobble is a water-based frog. Look how cute they all are! Fans of existing Pokémon need not worry though; Galar will feature a mix of both old and new creatures.

We got a brief glimpse of Galar, and it looks to be a pretty varied region filled with open green spaces and larger, brick-built cities. In terms of art style, it looks very similar to Pokémon Let’s Go – which, let’s face it, is to be expected – but it looks like the gameplay could be a little deeper. We can certainly expect a bigger game.

Pokémon Sword and Shield are set to release later in 2019. No date has been given yet, but it’s likely we’ll see the game sometime shortly before Christmas. The Nintendo Direct also promised “lots more Pokémon content” in 2019, whatever that means.

If you missed the Direct yourself, you can watch the video below. It’s a short one – only seven minutes long. We’ll have more information about the next generation of Pokémon as it’s released.